2 Business Cards, a Backstage Pass, and a Tool
by Rphoenix
Summary: Heero looks for a purpose in peacetime; the other pilots offer him some possibilities.


Two Business Cards, a Backstage Pass, and a Multi-Purpose Tool

By

Rachel Manija Brown

There are many methods of weapon disposal. A gun used for assassination may be wiped clean and tossed in a convenient recycler. An enemy's mine may be remote-detonated. A Gundam may be vaporized as a symbol of a government's commitment to pacifism, or as a preventive measure, or as a promise to oneself. A Gundam pilot may be killed, or may self-destruct, or may become something else entirely: a salvager, a Preventer, a businessman, a clown.

As the saying goes, a sword may be beaten into a plowshare. But no one who has piloted a Gundam can ever be certain that objects of metal have no minds of their own. I imagine that plowshare still dreams of slicing through yielding flesh even as it turns over fertile earth. And that if war breaks out again, it will regret that it blunted its cutting edge.

But there are more important things in the universe than the regrets of weapons.

I did everything I could to transform myself into something suitable for peacetime. I destroyed Wing Zero. I walked away from everyone I'd fought for or against or beside. And though I couldn't undo my physical alterations, I did my best to train my reflexes into something like a civilian's. I designed and implemented a rigorous program of mental and physical reconditioning to convince myself that the strangers beside me meant me no harm, that no one would attack me while I slept, and that I should not grope for either a gun or a self-destruct button whenever a sound (which should not bother me) woke me up in the middle of the night. And every night I visualized myself as something other than a force of destruction: if not a plow, at least a sword eternally gathering dust in some museum of antiquities.

But when Wu Fei and Sally Po tracked me down, my first and strongest awareness was of my utter lack of surprise. Of course they needed me to fight again. Of course the peace was a lie. I had never truly believed anything else.

"May we come in?" asked Sally, smiling.

"You're blocking the doorway," said Wu Fei.

I stepped aside and let them in. They glanced around my apartment.

"Spartan." Wu Fei spoke with approval.

"Minimalist," said Sally, less approvingly.

"Has Relena been kidnapped?" I asked. "Has Zechs gone insane again? Has some splinter faction or splinter of a splinter faction staged a coup? Or has some new charismatic megalomaniac appeared?"

Though Wu Fei nodded slightly at each of my scenarios, not in agreement that they had occurred but to indicate that he found them all plausible, Sally's eyebrows raised incrementally higher with each one. I could have continued ("Has Preventer Une's Lady Colonel persona re-emerged?") but she stopped me.

"No, Heero. There's no serious threat. Everything's reasonably peaceful at the moment."

"At the moment," emphasized Wu Fei.

"We wanted to invite you again to join the Preventers," she explained. "We've been very successful, as you may have noticed: no coups, no wars, no high-profile kidnappings."

"Then you don't need me," I said.

Wu Fei scowled. "It's hard work stopping incidents before they happen. We could use more trained men."

Sally coughed. Remarkably, Wu Fei added, "Or women." Then he frowned and glanced into the distance, as if watching those strange words as they left his mouth and went wherever out-of-character utterances go. I briefly wondered if Sally was feeding him mind-altering substances.

"I'm afraid I can't promise you excitement every day," said Sally. "Most of our work is quite boring. Odds are you'll never even draw your weapon, let alone fire it. But we do important work. We keep the peace."

Sally laid out the life of a Preventer in all its uninspiring detail: long hours spent on dull surveillance, painstaking data analysis, the tedious sifting and filing of endless reports. It didn't sound all that different from my current telecommuting programming job, and I was surprised that Wu Fei had stuck with it.

"We're very proud of our new facial recognition program," she said. "The latest analysis revealed that it saved us an average of 3.4 work hours per—"

"Sally!" burst out Wu Fei. "Don't tell him all that! You're making us sound like a bunch of bureaucratic weaklings!"

She jerked her head sideways at her partner. "I have to be honest, Wu Fei. He needs to know what he'd be letting himself in for. Preventers aren't soldiers."

"Yes, we are!" exclaimed Wu Fei. He turned to me. "I don't know what's gotten into her, Heero— maybe some strange female compulsion to highlight the negative— but I've seen nearly as much action with the Preventers as I did in the war. It's different without a Gundam, but in some ways that just makes it more of a challenge. I promise you, if you join us, you'll barely notice the difference between stopping wars and fighting them!"

I noticed that Sally seemed to be slowly sinking into the sofa cushions.

"I already gave you my answer," I replied. "It's no. I'm not a Gundam pilot any more, I'm not a soldier, and I'm not a Preventer. "

"A warrior unarmed is still a warrior," said Wu Fei.

"What are you, then?" asked Sally.

I walked to the door and held it open until they went back out.

Wu Fei crammed a slip of stiff paper into my hand on his way out. "Talk to me, not Sally. Women! They'll fire a gun, but they'll never admit that they enjoy it."

I looked at it after they were gone. It was a very professional-looking business card, black type on pure white. Preventer First Lieutenant Chang Wu Fei, followed by several phone numbers and an email address. Minimalist, as Sally had put it.

None of us had ever held military ranks, except Trowa when he'd gone undercover. I couldn't decide if it was an indicator that Wu Fei was right or that Sally was. I put the card on a bare built-in shelf, booted up my laptop, and got back to work.

#

I rocketed off my sofa at the noise. A second later, Duo burst into my apartment, laughing and dripping blood on my floor and apparently unfazed by the pistol and flashlight I had aimed at his face.

"What happened to my lock?" I demanded.

He shrugged, grinning and mopping at the gash across his forehead. "Oh, that little thing? I disarmed it, of course."

I scowled. I'd gone too far with my civilian re-entry program if Duo could hack my front door. I resolved to re-do it to make it Gundam pilot-proof.

"Ah, Heero," said Duo. "Sorry to just show up with no notice, but—"

Four men burst in through the open door, guns ready.

"—there's some guys after me," Duo concluded unnecessarily.

I swept the ankles of the first one, letting his head crack against the floor, and hit the second one in the jaw with my flashlight. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Duo knock out the other two. Metal glinted from between his fingers; he was using something to give his fist extra weight. Seconds later, we stood shoulder to shoulder, over four men lying unconscious on the floor.

"You didn't need my help to fight them," I said.

"Not really, but I thought I'd drop by while I was in the neighborhood." Duo stuffed the metal thing back in his pocket.

"The last I heard, you were running a salvage operation with Hilde."

"Oh, I still am!" he assured me. "These guys— well, their boss— had something I wanted to salvage."

I helped him drag the men out into the alley. We went back into my apartment, where I re-armed the lock, but didn't bother to re-program it. I didn't expect the men to try again, even in the unlikely event that they could replicate Duo's hack. Where I lived, they would be lucky to return to their boss with their shoes, let alone their wallets or weapons.

Duo flopped down on my sofa, put his muddy boots up on one arm, and let his braid trail over the other. He grinned up at me expectantly, eyes bright in the flashlight's beam.

I clicked off the flashlight and turned on the lights.

Duo looked around the apartment. "It's… very Heero. Aren't you going to ask why I was in the neighborhood?"

"To steal something, you said."

"To salvage something," he corrected me, but he didn't sound offended. "And no, I was already here." He squirmed around, digging his boot heels into the cushions. "This is a really hard sofa. Thing is, the salvage business has gotten too big for Hilde and me. Even too big for Hilde and Howard and Howard's guys and me. I heard you were here, and I thought you might be bored."

He glanced around again. "You definitely must be bored. I'm bored already just being here." Perhaps in an effort to combat his boredom, he reached up and grabbed Wu Fei's card off the shelf, squinted at it, then flipped it back. "We're more fun than Preventers! What do you think?"

"I think your salvage business is probably one of the things they're trying to prevent."

"Yeah, so? Obviously you're not into the law-and-order thing, or you'd have gone with him. You could just fix stuff for us, of course," he added. "Lots of what we get needs fixing. But I've got to say, Heero, you can do a lot more than program locks. You can beat up two men in four seconds. You can pilot a mobile suit, even if it's not a Gundam. You can pilot a shuttle. You can find stuff to salvage, and you can salvage it, and you can make sure no one salvages it back. Be a shame not to use the rest of your skills. Here, look at this."

He squirmed on the sofa until he had enough room to jam his hand into his pocket. He fished out a metal object and tossed it to me. It was cold and heavy in my hand. I turned it over, intrigued, snapping out its various attachments: pliers, a file, a saw, smooth and serrated knives, large and small bit drivers, wire cutters and strippers and crimpers…

"What do you think?" Duo asked

"Very handy. Where'd you get it?"

"It's salvage – real salvage," he said. "It's some kind of antique, but I greased it up till it works. But I meant was, what about coming with me?"

"I'm –" I hesitated over "happy;" is a plowshare happy? Is a sword? "I'm fine as I am. This is what I want."

"Yeah, yeah." Duo yanked some threads from my sofa and began twisting them together. "You and your laptop and your sofa and Wu Fei's business card, very cozy."

I suddenly felt tired. "How much of your salvage consists of weapons, Duo? How well do you check on their buyers?"

The motion of his hands stopped. In the silence that fell, I heard the clock ticking in the next apartment over.

"I check well enough to satisfy you," he said at last. "But if you like, I could put you in charge of that."

The light in his eyes reminded me of the white flash of Deathscythe vaporizing. "I know you hate war," I said awkwardly.

"I guess. I miss it too, though. But not enough to help start another one." He got up off the sofa and headed for the door.

"Your tool." I held it out to him.

"Keep it," Duo said. "Put your head on it, it's softer than your pillows."

The door clicked shut behind him. I sat down on the sofa. The arm his boots had rested on was smeared with mud, the arm his head had rested on was smeared with blood, and the part he'd picked at looked like a cat had gotten to it. The detached threads had been braided together and abandoned on a seat cushion. My blanket and pillow had muddy footprints on them. The room smelled like blood and leather, and the tool he'd given me smelled like cold metal and oil. All those mechanisms for dealing with wires: it was a perfect bomb-maker's tool. Did Duo mean his gift to tell me, as Wu Fei had, that I couldn't change my nature?

I cleaned up the sofa and put the tool on the shelf beside Wu Fei's card, but the clock in the other apartment was still ticking, and it was a while before I could sleep.

#

The envelope was addressed to my current alias. It contained a ticket and a backstage pass to _A Circus_. There was no note, but it wasn't hard to guess who had mailed it. I didn't think Trowa would come knocking on my door if I didn't show up, but I went anyway.

I hadn't seen an entire performance at _A Circus_ before, though I'd been backstage. Nor had I ever seen any complete circus performance. The closest I'd come was when I'd been very young, and Odin Lowe had posed as my father for the first half of a show. When the elephants squirted the audience with water and everyone was screaming and laughing, he took the opportunity to stab his target with a ricin-tipped needle. We left at intermission.

I might have become edgy when the elephants came onstage, but Trowa had thoughtfully taped off all the seats surrounding mine. From where I was sitting, I could see the entire stage and most of the audience, and no one sat behind me. As I watched Trowa and Catherine swing and catch each other, high above the stage, I thought that of all of us, he might have come closest to finding a way to fly again.

After the show, when I came backstage, Catherine intercepted me as I headed for Trowa's dressing room. "You're one of those Gundam guys! What do you want with my little brother?"

I shrugged. "He sent me a ticket and a backstage pass. I assume he wants something from me."

"Hmph." She tapped the flat of one of her throwing knives against her wrist. "Well, all right. But he's not in his dressing room. He went to feed the big cats. Want me to walk you?"

A few drops of blood made a trail. "I can find it.'

Caged lions and tigers tore at huge chunks of meat, while Trowa sat cross-legged on the straw-scattered floor, hand-feeding a litter of tiger cubs. He was still in his clown costume, but had taken off his makeup and had a towel in his lap.

"Hello." He motioned to me to sit beside him. "You can help. One piece at a time, or they'll choke."

I dipped my hand into the bowl of raw meat and offered it to the nearest cub. It was the size of an adult housecat, with thick fur and cloudy blue eyes. It snatched at the meat with needle-like teeth, then retreated with its prize. Another cub took its place. Its paws were disproportionately large, and its claws drew blood when it tried to climb up my thigh.

As I fed the small predators, I thought that Treize would have drawn some parallel between the cubs and teenage Gundam pilots, or perhaps between humans nurturing beasts that would eventually grow big enough to kill us with one blow and the folly of the arms race.

A grown tiger rubbed its cheek against the bars, and Trowa absently reached up and scratched behind its ears.

"Trowa," I said. "Do you think a sword can ever become a plow?"

He paused with his hand in the meat bowl, considering the question. A cub snapped at him, but he jerked his fingers out of the way with a few centimeters to spare.

"I think a human being is different from an object," he said. "Though if you weren't speaking metaphorically, yes, I imagine several swords melted together would make an excellent plow. One wouldn't be big enough."

"I've never actually seen a plow," I confessed.

Trowa held his hands apart. "They're about this big. Usually it takes a cow to pull one."

I wondered where he had seen such a thing. In all the time we'd been together, neither of us had ever spoken of our pasts. We'd never even discussed the past that we'd shared once it was over. Gundam pilots and terrorists live in an eternal present, working toward a future in which they will play no part. It had never occurred to me that I might live in that future, and yet here I was, feeding creatures that had never known war. One of them bit my finger. The blood that ran down was hot and wet, and decidedly non-metaphorical.

"Did you invite me here to ask me to join the circus?" I asked.

Trowa bent his head until his hair covered both eyes and his mouth as well. But he was not quick enough to stop me from seeing the skin around his visible eye begin to crinkle with what might have developed into a smile. "Heero— do you iwant /i to join the circus?"

"No."

"I didn't think so. Though if you like, when we're done here, I could teach you the trapeze."

"I'd like that," I said. The cub in my lap began to vibrate.

#

Quatre was polite enough to send me a letter before he showed up at my door, though he didn't allow enough time in between for me to write back. The letter also failed to reveal the nature of his "exciting, ground-breaking opportunity."

He stood in the door, clutching a duffel bag and smiling at me like no one had since Duo had left. I had the strange feeling that I ought to offer him a cup of tea. If I'd had a hot plate and tea bags and a pan and a cup, I probably would have.

He immediately gravitated toward the shelf. "Oh, you've seen Wu Fei and Trowa and…" He picked up the tool and briefly closed his eyes, then opened them with an even brighter smile. "Duo!"

I had the impression that he hadn't used the process of elimination to identify the former owner of the tool, but I decided not to ask.

He replaced the tool. "There's so much we can do now that we're not busy fighting all the time. It's so exciting!"

It was impossible not to be happy to see Quatre. It was also impossible not to be suspicious of his enthusiasm, which had so often preceded huge changes in the lives of everyone in his vicinity. I braced myself against any suggestion he might make to accompany him to Earth, or another colony, or outer space.

He settled down on my sofa. "Oh, it feels like a pilot's seat. Did it come with the apartment? No wonder you're still here."

I sat down next to him. I'd never realized it before, but the unyielding padding and even the dimensions of the seat area did bear some resemblance to my chair in Wing Zero and to other Gundams as well, though I recalled Wing being more comfortable and Epyon being less so.

"That's not why I'm still here. I could get a job piloting a real mobile suit any time."

"Of course you could," said Quatre soothingly. "But I have something much more challenging for you."

He reached into the duffel bag and pulled out a familiar-looking helmet with electrodes.

"Oh, no," I said. "Not that again."

"This is completely different," he assured me. "I had a team of scientists analyze the principles behind Epyon and Wing Zero, to see if they could isolate the effective elements while removing the possibility of… accidents."

"Absolutely not."

"I only need you to be the test subject. You could do it right here. It'll take ten minutes."

"I said no."

"The effect is much milder than the systems it was based on. Subtle, even."

He seemed so hopeful, it would be a shame to disappoint him. And he did say it was subtle. I could feel my resolve weakening. "What's it supposed to do?"

"It helps you make decisions. And it's not for military use at all, so it shouldn't have any of those sorts of… side effects."

"What are you going to do with it if I refuse?"

He hesitated. "Well… I suppose I'll have to try it myself."

I grabbed it. With the helmet in my hands, on the sofa that felt like a pilot's seat, I had the sense of slipping back in time.

"Stop me if I go berserk." I jammed the thing on my head.

He was right. It was subtle, especially compared to the mental overload that was Wing Zero and the meltdown of reality that was Epyon. My apartment didn't vanish. I could see Quatre sitting beside me, smell his aroma clean cotton and rain-scented soap, feel the warmth of his body heat, hear his breathing (a little faster now), and sense the minuscule vibration of his heartbeat transmitted through his body and into the sofa.

"Think of a decision you need to make," said Quatre. "It should show you all the paths that are open to you, and help you focus on the best one."

The appeal of death, or at least one of its appeals, it that it removes the necessity of decision. The horror and addiction of war is that decisions must be made faster than thought. Quatre might not intend it, but I knew and he knew that his device had obvious military applications.

I closed my eyes. Images began to flicker through my mind. I hadn't consciously chosen a decision to contemplate, but the system had apparently selected one for me.

I was flying in six-point restraints. Even in peacetime, test pilots are always in demand.

I was flying with my body touching nothing but air and the trapeze bar hooked under my knees. Then strong hands seized mine, stiff brown hair brushed against my face, and my trajectory changed as Trowa's momentum took over.

"Who should control education: the parents, the student, the society, or the state?" asked the professor. "Don't all raise your hands at once… Heero."

I watched Relena on the video monitor. I hadn't been allowed into the meeting itself, but if anything happened, I would be there in 2.9 seconds. 3.4 if I'd have to break down the door.

In the brief grace period before the end of blazing heat became the beginning of bitter cold, Quatre and I walked along the dunes. He stopped and cocked his head to the darkening sky. "Can you hear it?" he asked. But all I heard was the soft wind of our breath, the softer drum of our heartbeats, and, after a moment, his disappointed sigh.

Duo's hair was in my mouth and his elbows dug into my ribs. I felt him quiver with suppressed laughter as we tried to wedge ourselves deeper into the supply closet. The security guards' footsteps came closer.

"Covering fire!" I barked at Wu Fei. "Now!"

I strapped myself into the rebuilt Wing Zero, ready to fight and die.

I hit the red button. Everything went white. The world went on without me.

I stayed in my apartment with my sofa, my laptop, my pistol, my flashlight, a business card, a backstage pass, and a multi-purpose tool. The world went on without me.

Gradually, I became aware of the apartment again. I took off the helmet and handed it back to Quatre.

"You're right, it's very gentle," I said. "And it did show me a lot of different paths. But I still don't know which one is best."

"It's a start," said Quatre. "I tell you what— keep the helmet. We have duplicates. Let me know how it goes if you try it again."

I declined his offer to accompany him to the desert, where he had a research station. But he left me his card in case I ever wanted to call. The stock was yellowish paper with a slightly furry surface, and the print was rich brown rather than black.

I put the card on the shelf with Wu Fei's, and with Trowa's invitation and Duo's multi-purpose tool. I started to put the helmet beside them, but it was too big. Both it and Duo's tool fell to the floor. I picked up the tool. It was heavy for its size. Then I picked up the helmet. It was oddly light.

I sat down on the sofa and used the tool to disassemble the helmet. There was nothing but padding inside – no circuitry at all. The electrodes attached to nothing.

I dropped the helmet and ran outside. "Quatre!" I yelled.

People – not enemies, just ordinary people – turned to stare. But Quatre was gone.

I went back inside. War forces one to make fast decisions, but peace doesn't prevent them from occurring. I put my laptop in its case, along with the flashlight, business cards, backstage pass, and tool. My pistol and wallet were already on me. I deactivated the alarm on my way out. Then I walked to the shuttle station and got in line.

Static crackled over the intercom. "Last call for Colony F-490. Shuttle Flight 9379 for Colony F-490, now boarding at Gate 201."

Once a lucky hit from a mobile doll took out most of my sensors. I radioed Duo, "I'm coming in blind! Where can I land?" He radioed back, "You're in a Gundam. Anywhere you want to."

The line moved forward. I hadn't yet chosen my destination. But I was going to go wherever I wanted to.


End file.
